a world of progress site

Menu

Tag Archives: Middle East

I’m driving home from work a night or two ago, and as the miles tick by, I’m composing, in my head of course, a most perfect post. It’s my first in a while — I’ve just been too busy to write, and too tired, from all the news that has swamped my team in recent weeks. I’m sure you know what all that is, so I won’t reiterate it here.

It’s a damn good post, and I am excited about it. But once I arrive on the homefront, the 45 things I need to do before I can take some time for myself get in the way, and by the time I’m done, I really am too damn tired to write.

Curse me for not dictating it while I was driving, because now I’ve forgotten the whole thing. Except for the first word.

Feh.

It’s a word I use most often to indict my utter disgust at something. And that’s just not very helpful — I’m pretty damn disgusted right now, and nothing is standing out as the thing that disgusted me enough that night to want to write it all out.

It could be anything. My colleagues, for example, did a good job of disgusting me last week with their handling of Helen Thomas’s unfortunate choice of words and her subsequent and sudden retirement. “Get the hell out of the Middle East” just isn’t a very wise thing to say to Israel, although I can certainly understand the sentiment. But my god, you’d have thought my colleagues had heard her add “and throw them into the ovens” at the end. They reminded me of nothing so much as Donald Sutherland in “Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” hissing at pointing at those who aren’t like them.

Even the liberals. But then, they had no choice. Daring to criticize the Israelis is suicide in this country. If they hadn’t en masse joined in the hissing and pointing, they’d have been the ones hissed and pointed at, labeled anti-Semites no better than the Nazis.

See, in this country, calling someone a Nazi is OK, unless, of course, he or she really is one.

Take Glenn Beck, for example, who disgusts me pretty much every time he opens his mouth. He has a long history of labeling people he doesn’t agree with Nazis and fascists, right up until he promotes an actual fascist Nazi-sympathizer on his show, which apparently as AOK at Faux News.

I’m pretty sure my disgust wasn’t triggered by Yuma, Arizona, Mayor Al Krieger, because I just found out about him tonight. But it coulda been. Al, back on Memorial Day, delivered a speech praising the U.S. military for things like the invasion of Normandy, and then said

I cannot believe that a bunch of lacy-drawered, limp-wristed people could do what those men have done in the past.

He later defended those remarks, saying he was pretty sure that George Washington and Abraham Lincoln woulda said the same thing. And that his remarks came from the heart.

No, Al, they didn’t. They came from pure, unmitigated ignorance. Nobody asked Al if he really believed that no gay soldiers stormed the beach that day in France, or, as certainly happened, whether any lost their lives there defending their country. And nobody, of course, followed up with “Are you really that stupid?”

Apparently, he is. At least the religionists have something of an excuse for their ridiculous bigotry. Ignorance is never an excuse. It’s just ignorance. And, like most conservative ignorance like this, it’s willful.

Then there’s the fucking oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. Any part of that might have been what triggered my disgust — John Boehner insisting that the taxpayers should pay for the clean-up, BP’s utter incompetence, Obama’s pansy-assed response, Bobby Jindal, CNN’s inability to talk with anybody about the disaster except Billy Nungesser, James Carville and Mary Matalin, oiled birds, the ever-increasing flow estimates, British politicians whining that we Yanks are being mean to BP, Michael Bloomberg saying it’s not BP executives fault. Oh wait, that last one was just today.

How about Democrats voting with Alaska’s Lisa Mikulski to strip the Environmental Protection Agency of its ability to regulate greenhouse gases because, apparently, the highly politicized, partisan Congress without a scientist among them could do it better? Thankfully, that vote failed. For now.

Yeah, that’s pretty disgusting. But so is the unemployment rate. And the lack of prospects to see it drop anytime soon. And Congress’ (and the administration’s) complete unwillingness to do anything about it. Instead, our elected officials and their appointed advisers would rather fret over the non-issue of the deficit.

People, the deficit don’t mean shit. Most of the money we owe we owe to ourselves. Nothing but some serious deficit spending is going to get people back to work. And if we don’t get people back to work soon, the deficit isn’t going to matter at all, under any circumstances. It’s a bullshit issue, and there again are my colleagues, playing politics like the politicians.

But unemployment doesn’t affect the rich. In fact, they’re happy about it because their labor costs are down and they can pocket more money. What is gonna happen, and real soon if something doesn’t give, is that we’re going to be plunged back into the late 19th century, with a permanent underclass that can’t find work. The Victorian era. Robber barons. Rampant disease. Good times. Can’t wait.

Anything could have triggered my disgust that night. I just can’t remember what it was. Guess it doesn’t really matter, though. I’ve probably become a member of the new permanently disgusted class.